


Fine

by worstcommander



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Dom Kaidan, F/M, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, Mass Effect Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 07:09:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1849012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worstcommander/pseuds/worstcommander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're the boss, except when you're not. And in that case... come see me later." Fill for the Mass Effect Kinkmeme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fine

**Author's Note:**

> **original prompt:** <http://masseffectkink.livejournal.com/6609.html?thread=29054417>
>
>> "'You're the boss, except when you're not. And in that case... come see me later.'
>> 
>> This line has probably been used as the basis of a prompt a million times, but I don't care. Shepard (of either gender) relinquishes control in the bedroom to Kaidan (if it's because they think that's the only way they can stop leading for a little bit, so much the better) and Kaidan's only too happy to oblige.
>> 
>> Blindfolding Shepard and having Kaidan tease him/her by touching, using gentle biotics, and just talking (because let's face it, when there's that little husky bit to his voice it's delightful) is the prompt of the day here, folks!
>> 
>> Bonus points if Shepard comes from that alone, without ever actually needing to be penetrated or jerked off. Double bonus points if you manage to do it without using horrifically clichéd dirty talk because I honestly don't find it that great.
>> 
>> I have absolutely no preferences as to the gender of Shepard at all."

"Shepard?"   
  
"I'm fine."  
  
It's obvious that she's not -  her hand grips the edge of her desk so hard the knuckles are white and bloodless, the line of her shoulders a taut string, ready to snap at the brush of a finger. Even the words are tense, bitten out between teeth clenched tightly. Kaidan feels a brief flash of irritation that she still feels the need to lie to him, to recite the same soothing mantra she's been feeding the rest of the crew.   
  
 _I'm fine. Of course I can take on more work. Yes, I'm sleeping. No, this war isn't killing me one day at a time._  
  
The quarians had just tried to kill her, trapped her in a metal cage and fired on it while she fought the demons of their own making. He'd listened from his post in the CIC, recognizing the sharpening edge in her voice for well-controlled panic, rising at a pace with his own. It was happening again, he was going to watch her go down with another ship while he drifted out of reach, helpless.   
  
And she's  _fine_. 

She's sorting through a stack of datapads now, status updates, requests from the Alliance and demands from the Council. Most of them end up in the same growing stack, immediate action needed. Reasons not to sleep tonight. Commander Shepard never hesitates, never falters, never rests.   
  
That's why he's here.   
  
"Shepard." He lowers his voice, the pitch as deliberate as the steady pressure of his hand on her bicep. She knows what he's offering but it's always hers to accept, never his to take.   
  
He can watch her mind working, the consideration in the nibble of a full lip, the gaze she sweeps over the cluttered desk. If she refuses, and sometimes she does,  he's here to help, to file intelligence bursts and draft reports. He'll always share her burden, no matter what form that takes.   
  
"Okay," she says, drawing a deep breath, "okay."   
  
He releases her arm and walks to the lower level of her cabin, not glancing back to see if she's followed him down the stairs. He knows she has.   
  
"Strip."  
  
There's haste in her undressing but no rush to it. Each snap and closure is carefully undone, each article of clothing folded on itself and placed on the couch. It's not her preference but his-  sex on Shepard's terms usually leads to a room littered with discarded clothing, a narration of their fucking.  Shirts by the cabin door, pants by the desk, his underwear marking the spot where she'd pushed him against the fish tank and taken him into her mouth. This is deliberate, Shepard marking the boundary where her control ends and his begins. She steps out of her plain cotton briefs and stands at the foot of her bed, hands at her sides. Waiting.   
  
"On your knees, eyes closed." Kaidan knows from experience that the metal floor beneath them is cold, bordering on uncomfortable, but Shepard doesn't flinch as she sinks to it, legs folding gracefully beneath her. He steps past her to the nightstand she's reserved for him, rummaging through the datapads and extra socks until he finds the items he had in mind.  
  
One is a blindfold, and he watches her mouth quirk as she recognizes the item he's sliding over her eyes. She'd teased him about it the first time it made an appearance, something about "beauty sleep" and a dig at his maintenance routine, but the results had been... pretty spectacular.   
  
He takes a moment to admire her, kneeling below him. Her lips are slightly parted below the black band of the mask, her face tilted towards him, and her breathing has already slowed, a soft rise and fall of her chest that lifts her breasts gently. She's beautiful.

"Up on the bed," he says, and his voice breaks a little, betrays him. It's the way she trusts him, as he takes her elbow to guide her back up the bed, her silence when he fixes the mag cuffs to the headboard, even as her fingers curl inward at the restraint. Shepard is the most powerful woman in the galaxy and she finds her peace here, at his hands, at his command.  
  
First, XO business. He pads back up the stairs to her desk and begins going through the newest batch of unassigned datapads, organizing them by type and priority. Despite what Shepard thinks, sometimes the galaxy can wait for a few hours, and he's left with only a handful of truly urgent requests. None of which, he notes with a frown, couldn't have been delegated to her subordinates. No personal messages, no eyes-only reports. He forwards all but one of them to Traynor with various crew assignments and settles in to respond to the last, an informal update request from Admiral Hackett.   
  
Shepard's shifting on the bed down below him and a warm anticipation begins to build at the sound, low in his gut. He never would have dreamed this back on the hunt for Saren, for himself or for Shepard. She liked things a little rough, that much he learned on the night before Ilos, but this was something different. Something they'd discovered in each other, her need to step out of her role for a while and cede control, his pleasure at taking it.  
  
He drags a fingernail absently down the seam of his uniform pants, over the spot where he's beginning to harden. It's a tease, a way to keep himself amused as he puts the finishing touches on the report for Hackett. Let Shepard wait, wondering what he's up to, vulnerable and open with her arms fastened wide across the headboard. Her heart beginning to speed at every small sound, senses sharpening under the deprivation of the blindfold.   
  
It had embarrassed Kaidan a bit, in the beginning. That he got off on it, that maybe this was just as much for him as it was for her. But Kaidan knew control. He'd built his entire life around it, from that very first, deadly loss of it, and if Shepard needed to lose it sometimes to keep her head up, then she'd lose it with him, under him, around him.  
  
More than a little hard now, he palms himself through the fabric. He allows himself a low groan as he rocks his hips up off the work chair, knowing that Shepard can hear him from here, that just the sound of his voice can make her wet.   
  
"Can you hear what you're doing to me, Shepard?" he rises from the chair and walks slowly back down the stairs, shedding his own uniform along the way. "You're so hot like this. I could do anything to you, anything I wanted. " Kaidan punctuates that with a quick snap of his belt, enjoying the way she jumps at the sound of cracking leather. Taking a seat on the bed beside her, he breathes along her neck, so close his lips almost graze her ear.   
  
"And you couldn't stop me."  
  
The words have their intended effect, and she arches against the restraints, tongue darting out to moisten her lips. It's a lie, and not even a good one, she probably could have gotten out of the cuffs even before she came back stronger and tougher. The reality isn't important, it's the appearance of it. The way she feels, and right now she feels helpless. His voice is her anchor, her only point of reference in the darkness.   
  
"Kaidan... please."  
  
"Please what, Shepard? What do you want?"  
  
"I want... I want you to touch me. Please."  
  
At this distance, she must feel the heat radiating from his body. He presses closer, drawing himself up so that he's almost flush along the length of her, watching her squirm.   
  
"Nope," he says, and abruptly pulls back. Shepard groans, throwing her head back against the headboard in frustration.   
  
"You don't give orders right now,  _Commander_ ," he says, "I decide when I'm going to touch you." He pauses. "Or if."   
  
"Kaidan-"  
  
"Uh-uh."  
  
"Major." She wets her lips again, arching her back and thrusting her breasts into prominence. Goading him.

He dips a knee onto the foot of the bed. The sheets pull tight under him, and he skims a hand next to her leg, rippling the fabric, waves of cotton breaking against her skin. Kaidan continues until he reaches the headboard and moves upward, the wood rasping under his fingernails as he sketches her outline. He can see her eyes move under the blindfold, tracking the sound, adapting.   
  
 **CRACK**. He slaps his hand hard against the wood, right next to her ear, and she gasps in shock.   
  
"I don't have to touch you at all, do I Shepard?" he rasps, a hair from grazing her parted lips with his. He's so close he can feel her breath mingling with his, washing over his face in harsh pants as her composure frays. Kaidan's breathing is slow and controlled and he holds there, a steady beat as she calms, unconsciously matching his rhythm. In through the nose, out through the mouth.   
  
It’s not about where he is now but where he isn’t. His lips hover above her skin, almost close enough to touch, and as he works his way down from her neck the muscles of her shoulders clench under his breath, fighting the urge to move.  
  
"You love it when I touch you here," he says, mouth set above a stiff pink nipple. He blows a thin stream of air against it and he can see it tighten even more, hears the soft hiss above him. "This must be killing you, knowing how close I am."   
  
Shepard is silent but he can take the measure of the effort it requires, in the balling of her fists and the way her hips shift, thighs rubbing together. A thin sheen of sweat has risen between her breasts and as he moves lower he notes with a grin that he can already smell her arousal, a faint muskiness that goes straight to his groin. His lips brush hair, the wiry patch that signals his destination - another concession, Shepard prefers her skin bare. He hums his gratitude, millimeters from her skin.   
  
"Open for me, Shepard."  
  
There's a quiet shuffle as they reorient, a complicated negotiation of limbs and space as Shepard complies and Kaidan slides between her legs. Leaning back on his heels, he takes her in.   
  
This is Shepard. The silvering tracery of healed scars across her broad shoulders, the lean muscle in the thighs drawn up and apart. The flush that spreads her chest, the working of her throat as she swallows. His hand looks large and rough before the slick softness of her folds, his thumb nearly resting on the tip of her clit.   
  
"You're beautiful, Shepard. I..." Kaidan swallows thickly.  
  
"Going soft on me,  _Major_?" she pants, managing a weak smile. "I thought you-"   
  
He flares.   
  
Whatever words remain on her tongue are swallowed by her moan, her hips jerking from the bed, seeking contact with the hand he quickly moves away.   
  
“I’m not going to touch you, Shepard,” he says. “I don’t follow your orders right now.”

Shepard has tried to explain the sensation of his biotics before, an ultimately fruitless tangle of hand gestures, squinting eyes and labored metaphor.  
  
Brain Camp hadn't covered this application of biotics, the way the mass effect field generated by the energy radiating from his eezo nodes could caress instead of tear. The instructors had pushed power and speed, the kind that could suspend a man's gravity and then reassert it with prejudice, slamming him into the ground so he doesn't get back up. Finesse, Kaidan had taught himself, the delicate synchronization of eezo nodes, the faintest brush of energy, soft as breath blowing across skin.  
  
Delicacy is a facet of control, after all, and one Shepard is all too ready to surrender to. She's twisting a bit in her restraints, a strip of white denting her lower lip as she bites down on a whimper or a plea. Patience has never been her strong suit, she's passion and fire and when she's in control they burn each other up, quick and rough.  
  
Kaidan is patience, the slow steady flow of water, a current to drown in. Shepard rises like a wave under his hands, glowing and blue, not touching but touching.   
  
Here, he makes a choice.  
  
Some nights he devotes to the tease. The nights when she’s angry, when she’s raw, when the only thing that soothes her is driving her to the edge and holding her there, over and over, until she’s desperate and pleading, tears in her eyes but not the bad kind. On those nights he tips the scales, watches her swallow relief and lets her down gently as she laughs helplessly in his arms, giddy with the rush of delayed release. Those are good nights, the ones they end up together, every inch of his skin thrumming electric against her own, blood in her cheeks and sparks behind his eyes.  
  
There are other nights when she’s far away. When he can feel her pulling away from him, lost in the black sure as she was spinning out above ice and snow two years ago. Those nights are different.  
  
This is one of those nights.  
  
He can see her regrouping, gathering her defenses and so he flares again, drags the blue echo of his fingers up her thighs as she arches towards him.  
  
“Come, Shepard,” he murmurs, and she doesn’t disappoint, cresting along the wave he creates as he brushes her clit. Eyes rolled back, every tendon in her neck a stark line, her release is the apex of the curve of her body, still bound to the headboard.  
  
“ _Yes, yes, yespleaseyes-_ ”  
  
He doesn’t stop.  
  
He loves her. He rarely says it aloud and if he’s being realistic, he may never hear her say it back, but loving Shepard is the constant he builds himself around, stacking his tower brick by brick. Her face as she breaks under him is the most beautiful thing he has, the story he writes deep to carry him when the days grow long and dark again in her absence.  
  
“Kaidan…” she moans, and her eyes are still shrouded behind the mask but somehow he knows that they’re cracked in confusion, searching the face she can’t see before her. A strangled gasp and she’s coming again, her hands fisting in the restraints as the aftershocks roll through her.  
  
The room smells, thick and sweet, sweat and eezo and arousal layering heavy as she bends once more under the weight of her orgasm, breasts thrust upwards and her hips bucking against air.  
  
“Kaidan-!” Desperate, thready, her voice wavers in the stillness of the cabin. “Kaidan please, I can’t I can’t  _I can’t-_ ”

“You can.” He shifts his hips, never touching skin to skin but covering her in himself, in the field she can’t decide whether to join or shy away from. She’s shivering, cold sweat and helpless twitches as he roils across her, pinging every nerve as she shudders beneath him.  
  
Tears roll down her face as she moans, twisting away from his hand one moment and bucking towards him the next. He leans to her ear, not to touch, never to touch but close enough that he can feel the small hairs there tickle against his lips.  
  
“You are so beautiful like this. You are so strong. I know you can do this.” His fingers connect with her only for an instant, brush the slick skin of her clit and she  _screams_.  
  
It’s a long time before she comes back to herself. He disengages the magnetic seals on the cuffs, rubbing each wrist carefully and checking for anything she wouldn’t have noticed in her unmaking. On these nights there’s no giggly cuddles, no debrief session that gets a little too handsy. She rests her head on his chest and blinks, slowly, pulling studied breaths. In through her nose and out through her mouth. She’s blank, empty, thoroughly wrung-out.  
  
Just as he intended.  
  
He registers the dampness on his skin before he recognizes her voice, small in the mechanical emptiness of the room around them.  
  
“I fell.”  
  
“I know, Shepard,” He scrubs a hand roughly across her back and now it’s his turn to choke, his throat closing painfully around his words. “But I’ve got you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've gone back and forth on posting this, as it's a very old work and I would have written a different story had I started today. Life, eh.


End file.
